Planned Purchase Order and Release Approvals

We are currently using 12.1.3.  We have setup Position Hierarchies for Approvals for Standard Purchase Orders.  We would like to use the same approval process for Planned Purchase Orders and Releases.  Upon testing it appears, we need to run through the approvals for each Release.  So aside from the approval of the original Planned Purchase Order and if we plan to have 10 Releases, this means a total of 11 approvals.  Is there any way to avoid this?  If the Planned Purchase Order is already approved, can we skip the approval of the various releases so each Release doesn't go